welcome back to the big picture i'm sam sax in for tom foreman and coming up in this half hour do americans really need to read a survival guide on how to deal with obamacare my next guest thinks so she joins me in just a moment to tell us why we should all be afraid of universal health care and in tonight's daily take tom we'll tell you about the hidden history behind the second amendment and its relationship to one of the darkest stains on american history.

so throughout this year and into next year in a few more years obamacare will go into full effect americans will be forced to purchase health insurance and those who can afford it will receive subsidies from the government business is employing more than fifty people will also be required to purchase health insurance for their employees but already especially on a state level we're seeing maneuvers on the part of many republicans to sabotage the law before it goes into full effect the latest tactic is coming out of texas under obamacare for profit business is that offer health insurance coverage to their employees must also offer contraceptive coverage to their female employees for it many corporations have since come forward saying that providing contraceptive care violates their religious freedom you know as though a corporation is entitled to first amendment protections like we the people are most notably the craft store hobby lobby said it will defy the mandate thus denying their female employees contraceptive care which means it could be slapped with one

point three million dollars in fines every single day it doesn't provide this sort of care this is likely an issue that will eventually be settled at the courts but until then republican lawmakers want to enable. businesses that defy obamacare texas republican state representative jonathan strickland introduced legislation this week that rewards businesses that violate obamacare by giving them state tax breaks up to the amount they will be fined for not complying with the law in the case of hobby lobby this bill would free lobby lobby of paying any state taxes in texas as long as they continue to violate obamacare. you see this goes on perfectly with other efforts to cripple obamacare including republican governors refusing to set up health insurance exchanges as mandated by the law and governors refusing to expand medicaid coverage to cover more and more people in their state so while president obama may have won the fight to get obamacare passed or may speciate how successful he'll be in getting the law implemented joining me now is someone who

hopes he loses this fight dr betsy mccoy the former lieutenant governor of the state of new york and the author of the new book beating obamacare your handbook for surviving the new health care law dr mccoy welcome it's really good to have you on the show thank you so i just want to begin with saying you and i sort of agree i'm not a fan of this law either but i disagree on the left i think we need a single payer system i don't think this law went nearly far enough well let me just say that we have other agreements i'm sure we do i'm sure we have a lot of and i believe that everyone should have access to health care and health insurance i don't think anybody should lose a home or a lifetime of savings because they couldn't afford health insurance ok i just disagree with how this law did it ok well let's let's get into your book is called video obamacare your heritage for surviving the new health care law it's not a more difficult book by the way sam it's really just a very simple walk through ok for somebody who doesn't know anything about health care except what experience themselves what sort of dangers in mind as this law gets implemented that i need to survive well let's let's talk about one of the

biggest that's already happening right now most people get their health insurance through an employer that their own or a spouse is and yet in the coming months if it hasn't already happened to them they may hear from their employer that they're going to lose their coverage that employers are dropping coverage and here's why this is an applebee's franchise or wendy and you're going to hear lots more of this in the coming months sometime between now and october and the reason is simple this law holdouts everybody can see that this law says that employers with fifty or more full time workers have to provide cover. but not just any coverage they have to provide a one size fits all government designed essential benefit package that costs about twice as much as what many employers currently offer i mean how many businesses have more than fifty employees well i don't have the exact number but it's a big chunk one hundred sixty five million people get their health insurance rather

than the job by far the largest number in the country let me explain why this is a problem the employers look at the cost and say i can't afford that so i'm going to drop coverage or they look at it and say i'm going to push my full time workers down to part time status that is what the when i think that's a huge problem and i think over the last thirty years you've seen employers sucking more and more wealth of their workers if you look at the productivity keeps going up wages have remained flat we don't offer paid vacation paid sick leave which we saw with the flu but this law i guess that's a really big issue i don't think it was john was that i mean i think what i'm saying is i think people you see employers that are still sucking more and more benefits and pay out of their workers and now they can do it and blame obama care because really ninety six percent of all the businesses in the united states have fewer than fifty employees working for them so we're really only talking about four percent of businesses that are affected by this or purse and it was no that is i said i guess i can say have those men will have to make all those businesses the

vast majority already offer health care one statistic says only point two percent of businesses ten which is ten thousand out of six million will actually have to have to comply with this mandate so this is america i think you got it wrong people one hundred sixty five million people are going to be affected by this and let me explain why their employers are saying oh my god because this law the essential benefit package required under this law adds a dollar seventy nine an hour every hour to the cost of a full time worker now that's ok if you're hiring bankers or investment bankers or surgeons or lawyers but if you're trying to hire waiters. administrative assistants sales people entry level people who have fewer skills adding a dollar seventy nine an hour every hour to the cost of hiring them makes it prohibitive for a lot of employers we're talking about big major corporations the thing about oh we're not here they're not we're we're trying to you're going to be why you don't have more than fifty who have more than fifty employees but that if you're not in

the big one percent of business that's out in the united states so you have four or lots of franchise but not four percent of employees so we don't we don't large out revenue wouldn't even when we put in a lawyer we have a lot of small businesses that have fewer than fifty people and they're already offering health insurance to their employees they're not affected by this law right they're not affected so they're offering health insurance their employees and they have to compete with the big guys the big businesses that say you know what we're not going to offer any help well clearly it's there's a lot of us law put us on and even put small businesses on big business isn't even playing no because that even thing here we want small business the employers aren't doing that though they're dropping coverage and i'm talking about this from the point of view of the employee who suddenly is going to find out that he either doesn't have any health insurance anymore or he's lost his full time status on his job and if he earns too much too and roll in medicaid which is your option c. if your employer drops you you don't have the option of being uninsured because you have to you have to provide proof that you're in rolled in the government mandated

plan when you go to pay your taxes or you don't get your refund let's talk about this government mandated plan. it has you said it's a once that you say in this book it's a one size fits all government mandated plan which isn't exactly true it's a plan that has a minimum amount of benefits that the government says people should have access to whether this is what health care look you know let me tell you why it is true why it is a one size fits all because the list of required benefits is so long i've got to write here right now and if you want to serve you haven't cory's emergency services hospital hospitalization maternity care mental health prescription drugs lab services like you have the list of ten categories but then. inside each of those categories is so many requirements and here's what the result is because i've seen in the new york when you pass a law that every health plan has to have a very long list of required benefits you push up the cost of it new york has just about the highest premiums in the country because it's like passing a law that the only car you're allowed to buy is

a fully loaded cadillac some people only want to they can afford the fully loaded luxury sedan but this law says you don't have a choice certainly american speyer roughly twenty percent of their income toward health care so that's a serious problem that's one of the reasons why people are calling for health care it's not like we decided that this device is something that products are really it's not like we decided to pick out those business is more than fifty people and screw them we're trying to fix a problem and some people have to unfortunately think government and i should worry is predict that it's going to be a lot more expensive once the longest one of them we are trying to confront is the fact that forty thousand people die every year because they don't have health insurance have a ball bankruptcy's or result of medical i want to help them right now americans we have no problem without this law sam ok we will get to when you don't need it when you downloaded it here is seven hundred fifty two pages right now the kirk earlier americans pay about twenty percent of their income for health insurance now as part of the plan it's going to be capped at twelve percent what people are going to be contributing to their health insurance plan yes but you know you and i are talking

about helping the uninsured and we want to do that but what's wrong with this law it's not that it helps the uninsured i'm with you one hundred percent this law takes privacy away from people who already have health insurance it puts government in charge of the decisions your doctors make that you know the health insurance companies are currently in charge of right now no because i mean if they were dotted my decision here the doctor has to make sure that they're going to know that it's an either and you don't want to know about this law i know i was never told the hill i was there when this news reader i read enough about well i don't think so if you read section thirteen and as you said in your book this is this law has most legislation is go get some of this god but you have got. it's going to take away i'm a woman and women really care that their health records are not accessible by the government that the decisions they make with their doctor are not dictated by somebody in washington so i wouldn't leave fought for decades to prevent the federal government from looking at our medical records are dictating to our doctors

and now we've got along here that does both so here's the solution we have all these businesses that are being forced now to lay off their workers and everything but why don't we remove health care from the employment place and just say everybody is is guaranteed health care with a single payer system businesses can compete with foreign businesses that don't have to provide health insurance what's wrong with that idea well you know i want you out of flowerdale because i thought i was going to be talking to tom hartman tonight and and he's the heart man but i'm sure not heartless i want to help too so i listen to his proposal to have everybody on medicaid but here's the glitch the reason medicaid currently works is it's like a mushroom under a tree medicaid pay medicare pays ninety one cents for every dollar of care and the rest of it is made up by shifting the cost to all the people who have private insurance that's how medicare has survived so long by providing care but not paying the hospitals and doctors for the care they deliver will they so we could have they don't know why it is generous as a private hell no they pay them less than what it actually cost them on the

hospital says well to keep our doors open we'll charge jane or michael who has private insurance more but if you put everybody on medicare where is the money going to come from it's already going bankrupt so i want to help the uninsured by simply offering health care about yours debit cards some means for everyone who doesn't have health insurance to go out and get a plan for their family and i want to do it without interfering in the rest of our care well i think the debate is just starting there was a fight over the building how did you put over their professional bill dr mccoy thank you so much. and coming up gun nuts love to argue that the second. it was created so that americans could have protection from the possibility of a thai radical and overbearing government but that's not why our founding fathers created the second amendment tell you why it's really in our constitution and tonight.

so since the massacre in newtown several cities across the nation have held a gun buyback days where residents are encouraged to hand their firearms over to a local police force and they were turned to cash or a gift certificate to really good way to get at least some of the three hundred million guns that are currently on the streets off the streets and also gets other weapons off the streets too today a military shoulder fired rocket launcher was turned into a gun buyback in trent new jersey and yesterday at a buy back in seattle police acquired a surface to air missile launcher that first police noticed the owner was trying to sell it to somebody else for one hundred dollars they don't know how such weaponry

was acquired in the first place. and a gun buyback program in los angeles last month nabbed anti-tank rocket launchers as well now of course this sort of weaponry is already illegal and the vast majority of guns turned into buyback programs are perfectly legal handguns perfectly legal handguns that are not the focus of any sort of gun control debate here in washington d.c. at all that debate is focused on assault weapons and high capacity magazines no one seems eager to talk about the real weapons behind most gun deaths in america handguns more than six thousand people are killed by handguns every single year and as data from the f.b.i. shows seventy two percent of all firearm related homicides were result of a handgun but the supreme court has ruled that handguns are fully protected by the second amendment. but maybe it's time we reexamine the second amendment itself maybe if we all knew why the second amendment was created the first place we

wouldn't be so eager to defend it and that is the subject of tonight's they'll eat it. i'm going to tell you something you don't know about the second amendment something that has been lost largely in the pages of history although you can find it if you know where to look that is very crucial to informing everybody about today's current gun debate and that's this the real reason the second amendment was ratified and why it was state instead of country was to preserve the slave patrol militias in the southern states which was necessary to get were genius vote for the constitution. founders and virginians patrick henry george mason and james madison were all totally clear on that and we all should be today. today's second amendment is linked to our nation's disturbing history of slavery how. in the beginning there were the militias in the south they were also called the

slave patrols and they were well regulated by the states in georgia for example the generation before the american revolution laws were passed in seven hundred fifty five in fifty seven they required all plantation owners or their male white employees to be members of the georgia militia and for those armed militia members to make monthly inspections of the quarters of every slave in the state the law defined which counties had to have armed militia and even required armed militia members to keep a keen eye out for slaves who may be planning uprisings as dr karl t. bogus as that's his real name rode for the university of california law review in one thousand nine hundred eight quote the georgia statutes required patrol. under the direction of commissioned militia officers to examine every plantation each month and authorize them to search all negro houses for often c.

of weapons and ammunition and to apprehend then give twenty lashes to any slave found outside plantation grounds. this is the answer to the question raised by the character played by leonardo di caprio in django unchained when he has this. like some. creases i only wish i'd just rather kill the why. if that movie had been real it would have been a purely rhetorical question because every southerner of the era knew the simple answer well regulated militias kept the slaves in chains sally hayden in her book slave patrols law and violence of virginia in the carolinas notes that although eligibility for the militia seemed all encompassing not every middle aged white male virginian or carolinian became a slave patroller there were exceptions so that men in critical professions like judges legislators and students could stay at their work generally though she

documents how most southern men between eighteen and forty five including physicians and ministers had to serve on slave patrol in the militia at one time or another in their lives and slave rebellion or keeping those slave patrols busy that had the constitution was ratified hundreds of substantial slave uprisings that occurred across the south blacks outnumbered whites in large areas and the state militias were used to both prevent and to put down slave uprisings as dr bogus points out slavery can only exist in the context of a police state and the enforcement of that police state was the explicit job of the militias if the anti-slavery folks way up north figured out a way to disband or even move out of the state those southern. elisha's the police state of the south would collapse and similarly if the north were to invite into military service the slaves of the south which they could then emancipate that

would collapse the institution of slavery and the southern economic and social systems all together these two possibilities worried southerners like james monroe george mason who owned over three hundred slaves and the southern christian evangelical patrick henry who close opposed lavery on principle but also opposed freen slaves their main concern was that article one section eight of the newly proposed constitution which gave the federal government the power to raise and supervise the militia could also allow that federal militia to subsume their state militias and change them from slavery and forcing institutions into something that could even one day free as slaves this was not an imagined threat. famously twelve years earlier during the lead up to the revolutionary war british lord duns more offered freedom to slaves who could escape and join his forces liberty the

slaves was stitched onto their jackets pocket flaps during the war british the revolutionary war british general enery clinton extended that practice and seven hundred seventy nine and numerous freed slaves served in general george washington's army thus southern legislators and plantation owners lived not just in fear of their own slaves rebelling but also in fear that their slaves could be emancipated through military service at the ratifying convention in virginia and seven hundred eighty eight patrick henry later doubt he said let me here call your attention to that part article one section eight of the proposed constitution which gives the congress power to providing for our organizing arming and discipline in the militia and for governing such part of them as may be employed by the service of the united states by this you see that their control over our last and best defense is unlimited if they neglect or refuse to discipline or arm our militia

they will be useless the states can do neither this power being exclusively given to congress the power of appoint officers over men not disciplined or armed is ridiculous so that this pretended little remains of power left to the states may at the pleasure of congress be rendered nuggets hoary or negative dead george mason expressed a similar fear quote the militia may be here destroyed by that method which has been practiced in other parts of the world before that is by rendering them useless by disarming them under various pretenses congress may be glad to provide for arming and disciplining the militia in the state governments cannot do it for congress has an exclusive right to arm them under this proposed constitution. and re then bluntly later doubt if the country be invaded a state may go to war but cannot suppress slave insurrections under this new constitution if there should happen to be an insurrection of slaves the country cannot be said to have been invaded they cannot therefore suppress it without the

editor position of congress congress and congress only under this new constitution can call forth the militia and why was it the that was such a concern for patrick henry well as he said we were not so hard pushed as to make emancipation general but acts of assembly passed that every slave who would go in the army should be free patrick henry was also convinced that the power over the various state militias given the federal government and the new constitution could be used to strip the slave states of those slave patrol militias he knew the majority attitude in the north opposed slavery and he worried they'd use the constitution to free the south's slaves a process then called manumission the abolition as would he was certain to use that power and ironically this is pretty much what abraham lincoln and doing as patrick henry said they will search the paper of the constitution and see if they have

power of manumission and have they not sir have enough power to provide for the general defense and welfare may they not think that these call for the abolition of slavery may they not pronounce all slaves free and will not be warranted by that power this is no ambiguous implication or logical deduction the paper speaks to the point they have the clearer the power in clear unequivocal terms and will clearly and certainly exercise it he concluded by saying this is a local matter and i can see no propriety and subjecting it to congress. james madison the father of the constitution and a slave holder and self basically called patrick henry paranoid he said i was struck with surprise when i heard him express himself alarmed with respect to the emancipation of slaves there is no power toward it in that paper the constitution if there be i know it not but the southern fears wouldn't go away patrick henry even argued that southerners property slaves would be lost in the constitution and

the resulting slave uprising would be less than peaceful or tranquil he said in this situation i see a great deal of the property of the people of virginia in jeopardy and their peace and tranquillity god so madison who had at jefferson's insistence already begun to prepare proposed amendments to the constitution change his first draft of one that address the militia issue to make sure it was an ambiguous that the southern states could maintain their slave patrol militias his first draft for what became the second amendment ad said the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed a well a well armed well regulated militia being the best security of a free country but no person religiously scrupulous of bearing arms should be compelled to render military service in person. but henry mason and others wanted the southern states to preserve their slave patrolled militias independent of the

federal government so madison changed their word contrary to the words state and redraft of the second amendment into today's form it says a well regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free state the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed little in madison realized that one day in the future weapons manufacturing corporations newly defined as persons by a dysfunctional supreme court would use his slave for a tour patrol militia amendment to protect their right to benefactor and so assault weapons to be used to murder school children i just thought you should know this hidden history of the second amendment. and that's the way it is tonight tuesday january twenty ninth two thousand and thirteen and as tom always says don't forget democracy begins with you get out there get active occupy something tag you're it

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more news today violence is once again flared up. and these are the images you're world has been seeing from the streets of canada. giant corporations are the day. eleven. elliptic. span.